Cliff Sawyer

 

By Ralph DePalma

 

Cliff Sawyer was born and raised in Key West and has been singing since he was four years old.  The first song he ever sang was “Bad, Bad Whiskey” …it could make you lose your happy home. Cliff sang in his church choir and at Douglas Elementary School. He played the kettle drums in his elementary school band but has mainly been a vocalist. He continued to sing while attending Key West High School and graduated in 1966.  Andy Johnson, Cliff’s friend at Key West High School, played guitar while Cliff sang.

 

 

Cliff remembers hearing street corner bands in the 1940’s that included Fats Navarro singing and playing outside his window.  Cliff’s father played the trombone with Fats Navarro. 

 

 

Cliff occasionally sat in with Coffee Butler at the Hukilau on North Roosevelt and usually sang an Al Green song “Let’s Stay Together.” In 2005, Cliff organized a concert at the Tennessee Williams Theater. The orchestra included many Key West musicians.   Performing in such a huge room was quite a contrast from the intimate clubs Cliff was used to. He said when he walked on the stage he couldn’t see anyone in the cavernous venue because of the lighting. The concert included a special guest performance by Coffee Butler, who was introduced with a special rendition of “My Buddy.”  Coffee walked on stage and sang “A Wonderful World” with Cliff.

 

 

Just before Coffee’s wife Martha passed away, friends threw them a fiftieth anniversary party at the Key West Double Tree Grand Hotel. Cliff, Robert Albury, and several others performed for Coffee.  Some of his old Junk-a-noo band members started to play their old songs and Coffee couldn’t stand it any longer. He got up and sang “Who Put the Pepper in the Vaseline?” He was getting that old feeling again.

 

 

Cliff and his cousin Charles Hall, who had a voice like Billy Eckstein, were cast as natives in the film PT109 filmed near Key West on Big Munson Island.  Cliff remembers that during their break he and Charles would sing and Cliff Robertson told them that they needed to call his agent and get to Hollywood and make it big.

 

 

Cliff was drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam at 19 and suffers today from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  He still gets flashbacks of seeing a Army friend’s face smiling and happy and the next vision is their same image sometimes minutes later dead.  He came back from Vietnam a changed man.  He began drinking, and smoking, far out of character, and he developed an alcohol problem.  Cliff learned to manage those demons but the images still haunt him.

 

 

Cliff has worked as a commercial fisherman since 1985, and today he sings mostly Gospel music at his First Adventist Church.  His only “secular” music gig these days is at Little Palm Island with Phil Sampson.  He’s been playing one night a week there for twenty years.  Over his career, Cliff worked with almost every musician in Key West and recorded a CD with Fritz Zigler called “Looking Back.”

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